The occasional scrivener

Reading list

Reading

• The New York Review of Books, vol. LI
• A. Hunt and D. Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer (loan from Wille)

Shelf

To be returned

• John Keegan, Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (due 2005-01-11)

Queue

• David Allen, Getting Things Done
• Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist
• Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Pashazade: the First Arabesk
• Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides
• Graham Hancock, The Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige and Corruption of the International Aid Business
• Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor
• William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime (reviewed in NYRB, August 12, 2024)
• John Ajvide Lindqvist, L�t den r�tte komma in
• Ken MacLeod, Newton's Wake
• Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity
• Ewen Montagu, The Man who never was
• Ted Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America (reviewed in NYRB, vol. LI, no. 2)
• Alistair Reynolds, Century Rain
• N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815
• N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World
• Nick Sagan, Idlewild
• Neal Stephenson, The Confusion
• Neal Stephenson, The System of the World
• Charles Stross, Iron Sunrise
• Charles Stross, The Family Trade
• Arkadij Vaksberg, Skjut de galna hundarna!

((R) means "re-reading")

The all-seeing eye

Body of Secrets by James Bamford.

An "expos�" of the NSA. This book has a hacked-together feel, as if it was composed of several magzine articles. The author veers from describing the NSA as an all-knowing threat to democracy and liberty, to telling us about glitches, catastrophes, and bureaucracy hampering the Agency's ability to protect the US from it's enemies.

There's some interesting information in here though (assuming that the information is accurate):

• The description of how Israel attacked a Sigint ship during the Six Days War.

• The capture of another Sigint ship by the North Koreans in 1969.

• How the Viet Minh could monitor US radio traffic during the Vietnam war, as the Americans didn't bother to use communication security.

The sum of the book seems to be that, yes, the NSA can listen to every phone call and read every mail, but that they don't have enough qualified people to make sense of what they're picking up.

Must ... install ... GPG ...

It's official, I'm an anti-Microsoft fanatic

Sometimes (not often enough, if you ask me) msmobiles.com goes off on a tangent and rants about how the world is unfairly hindering the progress of Microsoft in the handheld market. It's the only reason I have them in my aggregator.

Of course, I want to share these gems with the gang at #mobitopia, but we don't want to increase the ranking of these pages -- the author (or authors) are not above dirty tricks themselves, so why should they get Google juice from us, the Symbian Mafia?

Enter evilurl.com. This works just like tinyurl.com, but the generated URLs are ... well, evil. This is now the preferred way to link to msmobiles.com among the members of the Mafia. What goes around, comes around.

I wasn't the one who suggested using evilurl.com (I think it was Jim), but I was the first who used it in the channel. Now they've noticed, and I'm officially an "anti-Microsoft fanatic". I've kind of had that feeling. It's nice to get it in writing.

Working

Even though I'm on vacation, I'm doing more work than usual (I hope my boss doesn't read this...).

Why? Well, we've finally taken gone to work on our bedroom (mini-diary in Swedish), and the nice thing about this kind of thing is that you see results. We've ripped up the ugly plastic carpeting and revealed a very nice pine parquet, started painting the ceiling and walls, and today we rippd out the old closet and turned it into an alcove instead.

I've also discovered that I have a critical mass of knowledge, tools, and materials to attempt quite ambitious projects. No last-minute , time-wasting trips to the hardware store. If I need something, I can usually do something else before going to the store -- thus enhancing efficiency. And the fact that I'm on vacation means that there's no time pressure.

A nice change from sitting in front of a computer all day.